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GUEST COMMENTARY - A lie repeated multiple times does not become truth. But it can certainly shape policy, especially when elected officials echo it. Assemblymember Rick Zbur gave millions of Californians cause for concern during the April 30 hearing of the Assembly Utilities and Energy (U&E) Committee. His remarks made clear where his sympathies lie.
Representing a district in Westside L.A. that stretches from Hollywood to Santa Monica, Zbur strongly backed AB 942. This bill would reduce rebates significantly to hundreds of thousands of California homeowners who took on or are considering taking on the expense of adopting rooftop solar to supply their own power needs and to contribute clean renewable energy back to the grid.
These Californians chose clean energy not only for sustainability, but also to reduce dependence on finite fossil fuels while sending surplus energy they generate back so other ratepayers can draw from it. But instead of supporting these solar-producing households and his own constituents, Zbur sold them out.
Assemblymember Zbur sided with corporate lobbyists against millions of Angelenos and Californians. Ratepayers across L.A. and the state are paying the price for this failure of representation.
As if the bill to sabotage solar households were not bad enough, the measure is sponsored by a longtime public-affairs executive to a major utility, Assemblymember Lisa Calderon. She also sits on the U&E committee alongside Zbur.
In fact, residential energy rates in California are nearly double the national average. The real driver isn’t rooftop solar; it’s utility mismanagement and unchecked profit-taking. PG&E alone, after pleading guilty to felonies related to the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, reported $2.5 billion in profits in 2024.
Evidence also shows that SoCal Edison has raised customer rates 26 percent from January 2022 to February 2025.
Yet at the hearing, utility lobbyists — and Zbur — tried to shift blame. They launched an unseemly attack on solar-producing households in an attempt to pin responsibility on and punish them for rate increases to electricity consumers that were set by the corporations. But what a great scapegoat! Solar producing households are 14 percent of SoCal Edison customers.
One powerful moment in the hearing came when Dwight James, an African American father of five from Simi Valley, testified how solar rebates help him keep his family afloat. More than 50 Californians made similar pleas, sharing their stories, including modest incomes and many with union affiliations. But Asm. Zbur dismissed them all, and stuck to the talking points from the utilities blaming small local producers of solar energy for the affordability crisis.
Why is a Democrat like Asm. Rick Zbur using the Republican and Trumpian technique of repeating falsehoods enough times to make people believe it? Campaign finance disclosures show that Asm. Zbur has accepted donations of $80,400 in the past two-plus years from Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs). That’s not just a conflict of interest; it’s a betrayal of the working-class families he was elected to serve.
Big corporate utilities have donated more than $80,000 to Asm. Zbur’s campaigns the past two-plus years.
Does that explain why he, like fellow L.A. Democrat Mark Gonzalez, used their speaking time at the Assembly hearing to repeat Big Utility talking points? Instead of calling out corporate greed and profit-taking by utility companies that are increasing the bills of ratepayers, they scapegoated solar-producing households with false rhetoric that shields corporate executives from scrutiny.
Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez also echoed false arguments by big utilities scapegoating solar households instead of questioning the billions in corporate profits extracted from ratepayers in higher bills.
With Democrats like these, working-class Californians don’t stand a chance of improving affordability, meeting climate benchmarks, or electrification goals.
Two other Democrats deserve credit for standing up to the surge of falsehoods and the total displacement of blame attempted by Asm. Zbur and the utility lobbyists.
Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a single-parent mom who represents the north San Fernando Valley, Castaic, and Santa Clarita, cited the staggering volume of calls and emails from her constituents opposing AB 942 in voting “no” on the measure.
Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, who represents a district that includes Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Malibu, and Pacific Palisades, which was ravaged by deadly wildfire on January 7, did not vote, a tactic in committee that has nearly the same effect as opposing the measure.
In the end, the bill made it out of committee to the Assembly Appropriations panel, one step before consideration on the floor. For anyone angry about how our energy bills got so high in California, without so little pushback by elected officials on the real culprits in the corporate offices of Big Utilities, the hearing starring Asm. Rick Zbur provides Exhibit A.
(Andrea Leon-Grossmann is a longtime advocate for environmental justice who has adapted her home to near zero carbon emissions. She is a published author of two books on energy and a resident of Assembly District 51 in Westside L.A.)
